Barnes & Noble says its version 1.2 software upgrade adds features to the Nook and improves performance.
Barnes & Noble

A new software upgrade is now available to owners of Barnes & Noble's Nook e-book reader. This is the second upgrade since the device launched in early December and it appears to be more substantial than the first, which arrived shortly after the product shipped and addressed a handful of small but pervasive bugs.

Here are the key updates, according to the FAQ at www.nook.com/support. Alas, you still can't stream full e-books to your Nook free of charge in a Barnes & Noble store (the company says that capability is coming in a future update).

Personal files downloaded onto nook and displayed in My Documents can be sorted by author and title

Overall system improvements and battery optimization

You can either download the update manually from www.nook.com/support (there's a download link along with instructions) or just turn on the device's wireless connection and wait for it to be updated automatically.

"Automatic over the air (OTA) updates, which do not require any action from nook customers, are under way and will be conducted seamlessly over the next week," says Barnes & Noble spokesperson Mary Ellen Keating.

We'll take a trip over to a Barnes & Noble store and check out the in-store features as soon as we get the update loaded onto a Nook. In the meantime, if you've got a Nook and have updated it, let us know what you think.

About the author

Executive Editor David Carnoy has been a leading member of CNET's Reviews team since 2000. He covers the gamut of gadgets and is a notable e-reader and e-publishing expert. He's also the author of the novels Knife Music and The Big Exit. Both titles are available as Kindle, iBooks, and Nook e-books.
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